


2020

by Riddance



Category: DBSK | Tohoshinki | TVfXQ | TVXQ, JYJ (Band)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-15
Updated: 2020-09-15
Packaged: 2021-03-06 14:21:07
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,264
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26480314
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Riddance/pseuds/Riddance
Summary: Reminiscing is inevitable.
Relationships: Jung Yunho (DBSK)/Kim Jaejoong
Kudos: 10





	2020

Jaejoong didn’t know, back when he debuted, back in 2003, just how the life of celebrity would not only be him, but follow him. He'd live permanently inside the snake’s mouth, holding up the jaws (some days better than others).

That even when not working, there would be no safe refuge in entertainment. He would always know too much to relax. Too much about the broadcasting networks and stations, the staff, the contracts, the scripts, the rules. That only, occasionally, could a really good movie or album take him away. Give him fresh air for a few hours just to pop back up, like a buoy in this strange life of being known, being a god amongst mortals.

He didn’t mean it conceitedly, completely. It just was what it was and it was frustrating for others to deny the difference between the famous and non-famous.

If he had known back then, what the internet would turn into… Maybe he would’ve never auditioned. But there had been no way to know a thing called YouTube would be invented and resurface all the moments he didn’t want to think about, because there was no point, because there was no pleasure in revisiting what was already inescapable. Since leaving DBSK, since JYJ had fallen apart too, it was all a crumbling castle-turned-prison to avoid eye contact with, along with everyone around him. A mocking embarrassment.

But this monster of nostalgia broke through, thanks to the algorithms. A simple search would end up recommending the past in perfectly curated thumbnails that pushed all the right buttons to make him ache. _‘That was filmed? When did that happen? I forgot that happened!’_

And it was amazing, to be someone so catalogued. He couldn’t have predicted his youth to be archived beyond his mind and that’s why he couldn’t help but click out of curiosity. Few had this advantage to relive. Maybe when they died, if the belief of some great life review with God and angels was real, they could see each moment everything was so right and wrong. But Jaejoong could already do that with the internet.

The fancams, the airport pics, the memes, the fanfiction.

_Jesus_ , the fanfiction.

He tried to ignore it but it was the pinnacle uniqueness of being a celebrity, being apart of strangers’ lives. That they still played with him this way. Writing him as characters and soothing themselves with alternative realities that were actually so normal. The alternative realities where everything had stayed perfect, just how they wanted it. (Well, perfect from their side.) That 2010 didn't come or it'd came but everything would be fixed, eventually, in some later year. (It was consistently pushed back, the more time went on and the more years passed that showed no reunion would happen.)

_‘Completed in 2012. Completed in 2014. Completed in 2017.’_

On and on, all the years, all the words. Much more than he’d probably written on his own about his own life.

He’d read the descriptions, feeling guilty, seeing how much hope fans had had for them. How they were always thinking of what needed to be expressed. How a joke from 2006, a hug from 2008, still crossed their minds. Or didn't even cross them. Memories that weren't remembered because first they would've had to have been forgotten. Fans somehow carved a place where the past was the present. That's what happens with commitment. They had too much history. Jaejoong could never be 2020 Jaejoong. He would remain every year at once, a reflecting hologram. Forever a daily recollection, along with their jobs & bills & grown lives now that they were no longer teens. This was love. This had been what it was all about, in the end. Even though he hadn’t known it. He’d been too tired from practicing and stretching himself to be the best. To dance, sing, promote. Be a good idol and stay a good friend. Time had rushed by during all that giving of himself and he hadn’t even known what he’d been giving. He couldn't have known in 2003. He still didn't know in 2010.

Love and memories. Fans that truly did want the best for him. That felt him like he was an extension of themselves. His pain was theirs and his joy was theirs and he felt the same. If they could only make everything okay through writing, then everyone would be healed. So many broken hearts. 

Of course, fanfiction immediately lead to the unconfirmed relationship between him and a certain someone else.

It had been a mess.

_That._

It had been... It was funny how unshareable it was.

That all this fiction could live on his laptop, but the truth could only be told in scraps. Only in songs.

Yunjae.

It was mixed with so much truth and lies, even he no longer knew what it was, couldn’t process when they were coworkers, when they were friends, when they were lovers.

That’s why there could be no confirmation.

Not for something felt as teens to young adults. Because just like the reunion dates that changed in fics, growing farther and farther from the split, ideas of love had grown farther and farther from what he’d shared once with Yunho.

If he had known a name could be so unavoidable, maybe he would’ve never debuted. 

Being aware that when people look at you, they see the phantoms of four others. To be tied in brotherhood and a favorite love story forever was like carrying an anchor. A beautiful miracle could be a horrible burden. It felt like everyone treated him as a person with missing pieces or a lost piece that needed to be locked back in time. _‘And don’t come back until it’s how it should’ve been. You should’ve stayed. Didn’t you know when you debuted, you died and were reborn a person of five? Wrong, wrong, wrong, to be alone.’_

The relationship between groups and their fans. There’s nothing else like it in the world.

He couldn’t help but read what they wrote. These people that’d followed him so closely, that slowed his movements down in gifs and videos, wanting every millisecond captured. Remixing his posts to create five others. _‘He had ramen today. Here’s three other times he had ramen. Same person, same ramen, but older.’_

It was a cannibalistic cycle. Fans ate him and fed him and Jaejoong did the same. Strangely, it felt like they knew him better than his own parents, his parents that had watched him long before his fame, his parents that had changed his diapers. 

In these fics, he learned how he was seen. How many ways fans could describe his pale skin and big eyes and plush lips. How they captured his curated openness and lonely warmth so delicately, sometimes he was impressed by his own features. Maybe he wasn’t that bad. This person that could produce 20,000 words out of someone else’s imagination. 

It was interesting for the ego.

_‘Yunho would never call me first. Forget about me going to Changmin’s wedding. Yoochun and I don’t even talk anymore. Junsu… He’s better off without any of us. He should’ve been solo, from the beginning.’_ is the type of commentary that comes at 2am, talking to a blue screen, getting lost in the stupid time machine that is the internet. 

But there were a few instances, after a couple of drinks, when he let go of reality in favor of these alternatives- it felt like fans got it right.

_‘I miss them too,’_ he’d comment anonymously. _‘This is how it should’ve been.’_

  
  
  
  



End file.
